The article links to [1] which says

> Nearly half of the 80,000 calls received daily by BT operators in the UK do not involve requests for help.

I would never have estimated such a high quote of unnecessary emergency calls.

And that‘s a fun fact

> Experts chose 999 rather than 111 for technical reasons. In pre-optical fibre days telegraph wires rubbed together in the wind and transmitted the equivalent of a 111 call

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20090302014433/http://www.btplc....